The New York Times and the Writers' Strike: Part 2 - General Reflection

The New York Times and the Writers' Strike: Part 2 - General Reflections	Jan. 22nd, 2008 @ 04:12 pm

The New York Times, Unions and the WGA: Part Two
Part One of this post How Weird is The New York Times?: NYT Assigns Former Producer to Cover the WGA

In one respect the writers' strike is unusual for The New York Times; "the paper of record" has been printing frequent, if not substantive, articles on the strike and the strike leaders. If this were any other strike by a union of comparative size we would have been privileged to receive three or four reports on the course and consequences of the strike, no more. But this is a Hollywood and New York Strike, effecting the very industry that The New York Times is close to, so we are cursed with a surplus of riches. Instead of three or four generally pro-industry articles from The Times we get a dozen and more.

This strike is unusual for The Times in another way; it has a regular reporter assigned to the strike beat. Michael Cieply is the reporter's name and he is an old hand at his job, who did a stint as a producer for Sony, which is of course one of the companies that is opposing the WGA. As noted earlier it treads close to an ethical line to assign a reporter to cover a strike who was once worked as a "producer" for one of the companies being struck. But more on Mr. Cieply later. I want to emphasize that this note is not about Michael Cieply or any other single reporter. He is only important here to the extent that he is the usual New York Times filter through which flows "all the news that is fit to print." He would not be in the position he has obtained if he were not able to articulate the usual anti-union world-view of the business leaders.

The coverage by The Times of the writers' strike has followed the usual pattern of corporate media coverage of union politics. The major media rarely covers strikes or the labor movement without marginalizing the union leaders involved, and trying its best to isolate the strikers from the rest of society. The New York Times treats unions and their leaders with the same template that they treat third world countries and their leaders. Union leaders are presented as either incompetent, unrealistic, or criminals. These leaders may be radical or moderate or pragmatic depending on whether they are helping the business classes or pursuing an independent course. Strikers are made to fall into at least one of three categories. They are either; (1) too uneducated or limited in their view to realize their own best interests and therefore marching toward mirages when they strike; or (2) coddled and lazy workers looking to extend their undeserved privileges; or (3) violent thugs who only have themselves to blame when respectable society cracks down on them.

The New York Times is our preeminent liberal newspaper and they will not be caught out advocating iron-fisted union busting; such a stance wold alienate their liberal middle class readership. So given the above three categories the next move of Times strike coverage is to find inside the union the true voice of the rank and file. They will find or invent a clique of union members who represent the mature leaders and pragmatic union leaders, or the union leaders who are realistic about the need to rationalize an industry and throw off dead weight, or the union leaders who are responsible and law abiding.

Reduced to its essentials the coverage of strikes by The New York Times is not much different than the kind of coverage we receive from the Murdoch owned New York Post. If either deigns to cover a strike we mostly see the strike from the point of view of "the innocent bystander" (consumers, non-striking workers who have lost their jobs, the investor), the business leader, or the union dissident. The main difference between The Times and The Post is that The Times tries to articulate the views of that section of the business class that wants "labor peace" for the long run and the Post just says what it is for, straight out with-out grace notes or business facts. The Post will simply call strikers clowns, rats, or thugs where the Times will condescend in the kind of Times-speak it usually reserves when covering a Third World country and the "underclass." Thus there is a sense in Times' strike coverage that strikers are somehow like children -- they are out of their depth in the real world; they are crying over their loss of the warm spot; or they are acting out of misplace nostalgia for a time of union militancy and socialist dreams. Besides all that, strikers, unlike respectable businessmen, argue among themselves and are mired in dissension. Occasionally, the mask of middle-class liberalism drops and strikers are told to get in line or get crushed.

In the above the reader will find the usual contours of newspaper coverage of unions and strikes. So it must be understood that when I dissect the Times' treatment of the writers' strike I am not claiming that the WGA leadership or the writers on strike are being treated worse than other groups in the labor movement. They are being treated about the same. Any quirks in treatment mostly have to do with accidental circumstances and the fact that we are, after all, dealing with an industry of celebrities.

The latest examples of anti-union reporting of the writers' strike follow a familiar pattern with a few twists. The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Variety, and The Hollywood Reporter are the major papers to look at when considering the WGA strike. (As usual The Wall Street Journal is an exception that would have to be dealt with on its own. Its coverage has been bluntly and honestly anti-union but without the usual cliché assumptions.) All of them have taken the exact same line from the beginning of the strike. Stated simply their line is as follows: The leadership of the WGA is unrealistic. The WGA leaders are amateurs who have lost touch with reality. The WGA leaders have a personal "ideological agenda", that can only hurt the industry.*

What all of these newspapers harp on again and again is dissent within the WGA. They look for it everywhere and in every article. When one prominent writer decided to scab on the strike he was given full, and repeated coverage. (One would think that he was not an individual but an army.) There are rumors that "A-list" screenwriters have broken ranks with the WGA, but none are named and none have come forward. In short, all four newspapers have invented a dissident faction of the WGA that is ready to break into the open and bring the current leadership down..

Thus you get headlines such as the following:

Writers’ Strike Tests the Mettle of 2 Outsiders By MICHAEL CIEPLY (Published January 19, 2008, The New York Times)

In Writers Strike, Signs of Internal Discontent Over Tactics By MICHAEL CIEPLY, (January 11, 2008, The New York Times)

Directors' Deal Could Split Striking Writers By Carl DiOrio (A Reuters piece, Published January 17, 2008, in The New York Times but also picked up by The Hollywood Reporter, The Washington Post, ABC.net, and a number of other newspapers. With the aid of google I looked around a bit and of the Reuters stories on the WGA picked up by other news venues this is the most popular.)

What is the real news of this strike? It is the unusual unity so far of the writers. I have rarely seen a strike where the workers turn up at the picket line in high numbers three months after the strike has begun. Picket lines often dwindle to 5 or 10 people this long into a strike. At the most recent picket line I went to at Viacom near Times Square in New York City I heard lively political debate and economic analysis. I heard debate over strategy and there was high level of consciousness of what this strike is about. And there were more than 200 people on the picket line.

What is The New York Times and Cieply's explanation for all of this? Perhaps it is the "Woodstock atmosphere" on the picket lines.

In the 1980s, when I was part of the Central American solidarity movement the Times would dismiss every large protest as "reminiscent of the sixties." The idea was that "those people" who are concerned with the lives of people in distant lands were motivated by nostalgia and we should ignore them. Cieply uses similar rhetoric in his analysis of the WGA strikers. He uses (sometimes weird) variations of oft' repeated anti-union clichés. Some of these cliches I noted in a previous post where I stated, "If ... picket lines are old fashion sorts of affairs that people won't cross, they blame unions for being thugs. If picket lines largely act as a moral reminder that people should stick together for the good of all who work, then the picketers are called cry-babies or people who are not serious." In this Cieply simply echoes the propaganda of the AMPTP. Early on the conglomerate mouthpieces complained of the "alternating mix of personal attacks and picket line frivolity" referring to "the WGA's continuing series of concerts, rallies, mock exorcisms, pencil-drops and Star Trek-themed gatherings."

Such complaints are clichés that seasoned union veterans have come to expect from The New York Times -- strikers are petulant children, or misguided idealists, or ideologically motivated reds, or thuggish criminals.


* Footnote: The ideological agenda of the WGA leaders is never defined precisely, but the phrase is used to refer to the goal of the WGA leadership to organize the unorganized and to maintain union solidarity. If this is "an ideological agenda" then the whole idea of having a union, and believing in worker solidarity and collective action has to be considered "an ideological agenda." The phrase "ideological agenda," which The New York Times has repeated uncritically is a code phrase for "these guys are "reds". One should expect old fashion red-bating every now and then. But in this case it hides something far more sinister. The idea that "organizing the unorganized" among Hollywood writers is itself an ideological agenda should signal to all unions that the conglomerates no longer intend to let unions expand within the movie and media industries. If other Hollywood unions listen carefully they would hear a union busting agenda from the multinational corporations now running things in Hollywood.

Jerry Monaco
22 January 2008
New York City






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amptp, anti-union, capitalism, ceos, cliches, dga, hypocrisy, ideology, media analysis, new york times, patric verrone, picket lines, strike breakers, strike tactics, strikes, wga, writers, writers' strike

Anti-Union Cliches: A clearly written example of self-contradiction

Anti-Union Cliches: A clearly written example of self-contradiction	Jan. 18th, 2008 @ 03:42 pm

I usually don't reply to posts such as the one below. But the writer at The Word Wrangler in his weblog entry, Why I Don’t Support the Writer’s Strike, states his position so clearly that it is easy to see through the usual cliches. There is the usual cliche that somehow joining a union is a way to get around "personal responsibility". There is the cliche that we live in a competitive market, on a level playing field and all you have to do is go out and create your own business to compete with the corporations.

On the other hand there is the usual fatalistic notion that people shouldn't cooperate to change their situation. The corporations set the rules and all you can do is follow their rules or go out and create similar rules that others follow. The Word Wrangler writes in his post , "For those that think they’re getting screwed by the corporations - which they probably are - go off on your own. Start your own company. Make your own future instead of crying about your present." Basically, this reduces to the following choice, "Screw or get screwed," either get exploited or do some exploiting yourself. There is no perspective that the basic situation might be changed, or at least made better for those who come after. ( Another possibility of course is that you will hope that your business will be somehow "different." Many have tried, through cooperatives, share-alike business organizations, etc. These forms are good, but unfortunately in our society very unstable.)

There is also the usual silliness, and yes it is silliness, that people that are out on strike, fighting for themselves and others are somehow "cry babies." Having known people who have gotten beaten up by company goons while on picket-lines, I find it kind of childish that a person compares a picket line "to a child holding his breath until he gets what he wants." Union haters are mired in self-contradiction, in this respect. If the picket lines are old fashion sorts of affairs that people won't cross, they blame unions for being thugs. If picket lines largely act as a moral reminder that people should stick together for the good of all who work, then the picketers are called cry-babies or people who are not serious. The conglomerates have said this about the current WGA picketers over and over again. The anti-union types will often go back and forth between these two complaints depending on the strike and the type of picket line.

I use the above phrase "anti-union type" gingerly, but I don't want to be too mean to The Word Wrangler because it seems to me that he doesn't see that his cliches are such and are in many ways self-contradictory. He writes clearly, and not like a hardened intellectual who can hide the contradictions in his thought. For this precise reason his expressions are useful.

So after this post I reply at length: (Note: I left a shorter and non-proofread version of my reply at The Word Wrangler. Word Wrangler replied very politely.

Why I Don’t Support the Writer’s Strike
Posted in January 18th, 2008
by The Word Wrangler in Rant

I’ve been avoiding talking about the writer’s strike for a couple of reasons. The first one being that I don’t support strikes, nor do I support unions. The second one is that I believe that people should take responsibility for their own lives. If you think you’re getting a raw deal at your job, then change jobs. Change careers if you want. But don’t stand around with a sign on a picket line, which is the adult equivalent of a child holding his breath until he gets what he wants.

Anne Wayman from the Golden Pencil posted a link to a piece on the Writer’s Resource Center giving three reasons to support the strike.

So I’m giving my reasons why I don’t support the strike.

The rules are set by the corporations - If I went to work at Marvel Comics as a writer or artist, I know going in that the company is pretty much going to own whatever it is I create. If I create the next Superman - and Marvel makes millions of dollars in TV, toys, movies and comic books - chances are I’m still going to be compensated based on our original agreement with Marvel coming out on top. And Marvel certainly isn’t going to give me the rights to the character that’s earning them that much scratch. I know this going in. If I don’t want to play by those rules, I can choose not to.

It’s their game so don’t whine about it when you come out on the bottom of a deal.

Personal responsibility - I admit that I lean pretty far to the conservative side of the political spectrum. My father is a no-nonsense guy and an extremely hard worker. He always preached about controlling your own destiny instead of it controlling you. Make choices - both good and bad - and live with the consequences. And if you’re in a situation you don’t like, pull yourself up out of it and move on.

I realize we live in a society that doesn’t like to hear that. We don’t want to work hard for what we want. We think we’re entitled to everything and when we don’t get it, we whine. We think the companies we work for owe us all. Well, I got news for y’all, it ain’t like that.

For those that think they’re getting screwed by the corporations - which they probably are - go off on your own. Start your own company. Make your own future instead of crying about your present.

The marketplace has changed drastically over the past decade. There are more opportunities than ever for creative people to get noticed, make money AND keep the rights to their material than ever before.

Instead of trying to change someone else’s rules, why not just go and make up your own?

Word Wrangler,

We have so little common ground between us, that a discussion between us would probably be difficult. But because you state your view so clearly it is also easy to see the alternatives that you leave out.

You say that there are a couple of reasons you don't support the WGA strike: "The first one being that I don’t support strikes, nor do I support unions. The second one is that I believe that people should take responsibility for their own lives."

You state this right out without giving reasons. You also seem to connect "personal responsibility" and being anti-union. Later you say that corporations set the rules. So let me ask you the following questions.

1) What is a corporation but a state-sanctioned and legally protected union of investors and owners? Why do you support the kind of union of owners that is a corporation, but not a union of employees? The business institution we call a corporation was not created whole cloth and neither is it a "natural phenomena" that has always been with us. In your post you in effect assume that both of these situations are true, both that corporations suddenly appeared as arbitrary institutions and that they are natural phenomena that no one can change. The rules are the rules. But corporations were created through heavy state intervention and enabled by laws created by lawyers and judges. Why should you support laws and state-intervention to enable corporations but be opposed to people getting together in unions? My suspicion is that you believe in corporations and not unions because the business institutions are the dominant form in our country and as John Dewey said, business is simply the political air we breath.

So this is the first contradiction that I find in your post: You are in favor of unions of owners and investors, corporations that are the height of the lack of personal responsibility because this lack of personal responsibility is encoded in the law under the guise of "limited liability." But you are opposed to cooperation between employees in collective bargaining.

2) If people cooperate with each other to get things done, do you consider this something that is counter to "personal responsibility"? Why shouldn't employees cooperate to bargain with their employer? Why shouldn't employees try to improve the work situation that they are in? Why is cooperating with others to improve your situation, or the situation of your industry, somehow an abnegation of personal responsibility? I don't really understand how personal responsibility and cooperation with others contradict each other. In fact, I consider the idea that "personal responsibility" and self-help through cooperation with others are mutually exclusive another example of how you fall into self-contradiction.

3) You state "the rules are set by corporations", as if this is something we should just accept. (Are you always advocating the same kind of acceptance? A slave says: "The rules are set by slave owners. Accept it.") What rules are you talking about in this case?

Well, in the next breath you speak of copyright rules. You point out correctly that the people who created Superman for Marvel DC comics were little compensated for their creativity. The Marvel DC company made millions and the creators made very little. Then you say that writers can choose not to cooperate with the company or go do something else. In the case of the actual creators of Superman and others of that generation [from what my friends tell me of their lives] this was not exactly much of a choice. They could have been accuntants, lawyers and doctors instead but they chose to be creative. In their case, and in many cases, doing something else usually means simply giving up on their own creative ideas.

Maybe in giving up on working with a corporation that can help to distribute your creations you will have other ideas, or maybe you will just put all ideas in a drawer. I have known many poets, some of the with money and jobs and some of them living catch as catch can. But I have rarely met a poet with business sense. The same is true of many artists. Why should we construct a scoiety where the only people who have decent lives ar those that run their own businesses? Are these the only choices you wish to offer? Why isn't participating in a union also a choice?

Why not expand your choices through trying to cooperate with others in changing the rules to a system that would be better for workers and creators? Corporations changed the rules because they cooperated with investors and hired lawyers and twisted the arms of judges and bought politicians to get the copyright laws that favor them and not the creators. One reason why writers need a union is so they can get together and higher people who are expert in bargaining and twisting arms of judges and lobbying to get copyright laws favorable to individuals. There was nothing inevitable about the copyright rules we have now. Why shouldn't they be changed by us all in favor of the creator. I look at this as a minimal reform.

Still, it is not quite true to say that these rules were set by corporations. The rules for copyright were set, not by corporations, but by Congress as enabled by the U.S. constitution. These rules of copyright are a state-granted monopoly for a limited amount of time (supposedly "limited", but not if Disney keeps getting its way) giving the creator use and disposal of the creative work. There is nothing natural or inevitable about these rules and what is certain is that the founders of our country only envisioned patents and copyrights being owned by individual people and not by corporations. The idea that fictional people (corporations) could own fictional property (copyright and patents) is a very recent phenomena in history. It is a recent phenomena that we allowed to happen because we have neglected the public domain and allowed corporations and states to run rough-shod over (in this case) individual rights. The reason this phenomena came about in the first place was through acts of judicial activism, i.e. supreme court decisions argued by corporate lawyers in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. The situation where most writers don't control their own copyrights was only codified in law by congress in the 1970s. And it was only through lobbying by corporations to pass new copyright laws that we are in the current mess we are in.

So once again back to unions. If creators of songs, stories, movies, and comic books had as much bargaining power as corporations in the early part of the 20th century the situation would have been different. In other words, back then the best way to protect individual rights would have been through forming a union or some sort of cooperative organization to save individual control of copyright. Later in the century if individuals had as much political influence over congress as rent-seeking businesses, "for hire" ownership of copyright would never have come about.

Personally, I think that it is the epitome of personal responsibility to risk some of one's own personal comfort to form collective organizations to cooperate to make better rules in this part of the world

Jerry Monaco

P.S. Word Wrangler's reply:

The Word Wrangler said,
in January 18th, 2008 at 12:53 pm

Thanks for the comment Jerry. First, let me start out by stating that I don’t have the level of education regarding copyrights and their history that you do, so I really can’t address that issue.

One question you asked was: “Why is cooperating with others to improve your situation or the situation of your industry somehow an abnegation of personal responsibility?”

The answer is: It isn’t.

I’ll go back to my Marvel Comics example. Back in the 90s, when comics were hot, there were a few very talented creators who worked either for Marvel or DC. These creators became sick of the ‘work for hire’ business practices at the big corporations and - rather than forming a union, striking or picketing - they went off and formed their own company Image Comics.

Image’s business model was based on the notion that creators could publish under the Image umbrella, but still retain all rights to their characters and maintain independent studios.

That’s a good example of people cooperating to change the way business works. Image became so successful that Marvel and DC started treating their talent better because they didn’t want them going off on their own.

Instead of trying to hold a company hostage in order to get what they wanted, they went out and got what they wanted on their own. They changed the rules by making their own rules.

The world is changing in such a way that offers global opportunities for creators. I think we’re moving towards a time where creative types won’t need unions or corporations to find success. And I think that’s in everyone’s best interest.

My reply to this was to say was that a cooperative model for creative writers and a union of employees are not mutually exclusive. (You can read my full comment at The Word Wrangler's site.)

Postscript: Because of the WGA strike I have read comments by Brian K. Vaughan who believes that the comic book industry would be much better if the comic book creators had a decent union.

This brings up another subject -- the issue of industry customs and standards. The reason that companies that make movies and comic books in general control the copyrights of the creative workers is a matter of industry custom and standards.

Consider the following:

In the industries that were created before modern copyright existed the creators have substantial control of their copyrights. In many of the industries created in the 20th Century creators lost control of their copyrights. This was mainly because of economic "power", and the rise of vast networks of distribution. Historically, if a creator did not have access to the networks of distribution, which were usually held as oligopolies by three or four companies, then the creator lost control of the uses and reuses of his creation.

The division between creative workers and ownership was especially true in industries where several creators worked on one product. More often than not the company would try to maintain a high-level of competition between creators and category of creators. Thus in the movie business editors were set against directors, set designers against the wardrobe designer, wardrobe designers against make-up artists, writers against directors and unit producers, and directors were set against every one. It was precisely such situations that unions were meant to resolve. Unfortunately, because of manipulation by the bosses and defeats on the line the unions often exacerbated this situation. All of this is part of a longer story....

Jerry Monaco

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